Ancient equipment and programming methods, some of it dating back to the late 1950s.
Diversity hires that aren't smart enough to change their car tire, let alone program in ALGOL58.
Fake it until you break it methodology
More traffic than was ever anticipated on the systems.
et. al.
But we have Billions for Ukraine! And illegal aliens! And Social Justice! And Bank bailouts! And ...
I remember freaking over the old system 30+ years ago when I began traveling a lot for the company. Apparently there has been little or no system improvement since.
There used to be this really awesome magazine called Innovation and Technology, published in the 1990s and sponsored by GM before they went way woke. It was a mix of innovations in technology and stories about past tech that was still in operation. I really wish they'd omnibus that series because it was, for the most part, timeless anthology.
One of the articles was about the Air Traffic control system. It was talked about in terms of being overloaded then, and one of the pilots interviewed for the article was stating that certain portions would crash 100% of the time when a certain number of birds in the air was exceeded. It was in bad shape then, and it's not been changed much in the 20+ years that article was written.
I vaguely remember Innovation and Technology Magazine, I never subscribed because I was already buried in industrial periodicals. That could have been the article that I heard about from a coworker at the time. I may have borrowed and read it. Hard to remember where I first learned about it after so many years, but the Engineering Director pops into my mind as my source.
The first one is actually a good thing compared to modern software created by point number 2.
It's not that there's anything wrong with it other than it may be hard to find proficient people, and you're fixing 60 year old bugs.
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